Are ready to be captured by the Lord

Homily for August 7, 2016 (19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)
Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to join a group for a visit to the Shrine of Christ’s Passion in St. John, Indiana.  The shrine, which took 10 years to develop, is essentially an outdoor Stations of the Cross.  What makes it special is that within its stark but beautiful landscape are 40 life-size bronze statues featuring Jesus and the various men and women who were part of his journey to Calvary.  (It also has some extra stations devoted to the Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord.)  Each station also features a meditation recorded by legendary Chicago anchorman Bill Kurtis.

Our group was about halfway through our pilgrimage when our tour guide, a retired Chicago cop, had to pause and politely but firmly tell two boys on their bikes to leave the property.  They had been playing Pokémon Go, an “augmented reality” game and fad that is sweeping the world.  It’s estimated that the game’s app is downloaded more than 6 million times a day.  The purpose of the game is to capture as many characters as possible by going to various places—“Poke-sites”—and using the app to gather one’s fictional quarry.  Apparently the boys had determined that the Shrine of Christ’s Passion was one such site.  They found instead that it was a Pokémon No-Go Zone.

In recent weeks a number of other places, including the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and Arlington National Cemetery, have had to make similar declarations.  They aren’t against people, especially kids, having fun.  Instead, they’re trying to preserve an atmosphere of reverence, quiet and order that encourages contemplation on the horrors as well as the acts of heroism that accompany the evils of genocide and war.  They are also reminders that if we fail to remember our past, we can easily lose our way in the present and future.

Our readings offer us similar senses of sacred remembrance.  The author of Wisdom, writing in the 1st century BCE to a Jewish community that had been scattered from Jerusalem and Palestine due a series of occupations and deportations, invited them to consider what God had done for their ancestors who were similarly oppressed in Egypt.  Just as those ancestors had celebrated the first Passover in secret on the eve of their liberation, so their descendants would need to continue to observe their faith, in secret if necessary, and live in hope of God’s salvation.

Writing many years later to the early church, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews called his largely Jewish-Christian audience to go back even further, to God’s call of their patriarch, Abraham.  Like him they were being called to step into unchartered territory and journey to a place they couldn’t see.  Like him they were being challenged to be ready to let go of everything dear to them, including their own family members.  Like him they had to rely on God to bring forth from them the fruits of God’s promises.

The parables about the vigilant stewards posed a different kind of remembrance to Jesus’ disciples—focused not on the past but on the future.  They had to discern what was passing and what had lasting value.  Were they prepared for the Lord’s return, which could come at any time?  Were they ready to be captured by the Lord, not for the sake of a game but for eternity and not only in the life to come but in this life?

Are we? +